The Fina Venko (Esperanto for "Final Victory") refers to the sudden and sharp rise in the prominence of the Esperanto language during the 2060s, with the number of proficient speakers of the language sharply rising from an estimated 10 million in 2050 to approximately 2 billion by 2070, or 1/5th of the human population at the time.

The Act to Establish the Official Languages of the Union, passed by the Council of the Leagues of Commons of Turtle Island on January 17th, 2060, is generally recognized as the beginning of the Fina Venko. This law, intended to break the disproportionate political power of Anglophones in early Locoti, designated Esperanto as Locoti's spoken lingua franca on the basis of its similarities to the three most widely spoken languages in the union at the time: English, Spanish, and French. The law simultaneously designated the then-endangered Hand Talk as Locoti's signed lingua franca, with primacy over Esperanto as part of Locoti's Indigenous language policy. The law further enacted a number of other policies as part of the Crush Anglo Chauvinism campaign of Locoti's first five-year plan.

Following Locoti's embrace of Esperanto, the European Federation designated Esperanto as one of its own federal languages at the conclusion of its own socialist revolution in 2062. The Constitution of the European Federation also designates Interslavic and European American Sign Language (EASL) as federal languages, with Interslavic being favored in the Slavic-speaking states of the federation, and Esperanto being favored in most other states.

Being an official language of two of the four founding member states, Esperanto was also designated an official language of the Coordinating Body (CB) at its foundation in 2063. Esperanto has been included in every edition of the CB's list of Languages for Cultivation as Lingue Franche ever since, and the momentum provided by the Coordinating Body's embrace of Esperanto kept global interest in the language growing for the rest of the 2060s. By the end of the decade, however, Esperanto had only managed to gain a foothold in the rest of Abya Yala, and had otherwise been outcompeted by languages such as Standard Chinese, Swahili, and Modern Standard Arabic as regional lingue franche, with International Sign establishing itself as the global lingua franca.

Nonetheless, although Esperanto's growth as a second language had leveled off by 2070, Esperanto's growth as a first language would continue until 2090. These native Esperantists now comprise the largest share of the Esperanto community, as the ultimate success of Esperanto left non-natives with fewer reasons to participate in the community.

While working on what is basically just glorified fan fiction I thought about how true space exploration/colonization will likely not be possible without world socialism.

A Hypothetical Future, likely hundreds of years from now

Social Background

This is following collapse of the U.S., a large regional war, the rise of China as industrial and research superpower, various climate wars, mass migrations, and expansion of a new international socialism that will be unlike anything we could predict today (and might even upset some, it could borrow from a variety of normally oppositional sects). Whatever it is, the material conditions of that moment, as well as historical forces, will give birth to it. Likely a number of currents, some Marxist, some ad-hoc, will form a mutual project and later a Federation. A glorious tapestry of local flavors of worker dominated governments, from libertarian socialist/anarchist collectives to Marxist-Leninist state powerhouses, all united under a world forum government against the bourgeois and exploitation of old.

A short history over a century or so

As capitalist nation after nation falls to rule by the working class, more frantic efforts will be made by the bourgeois to both make Hail Mary colonies (planetary or orbital), set up basic industry to sustain them, and otherwise bootstrap. They will flee from one nation-state to the next, trying to outrun the inevitable and strip their new "homes" for resources for this endevour. Con-men and grifters, they will bring wealth to poor nations and whisper promises, but really they are just there to build a few more rockets and leave wreckage in their wake. Eventually they will start to run out of places to loot, and some of these nations might even force ably exile these former rulers to space (basically a "you ruined the planet, you like space so much, why don't you go there and never come back").

As the world socialist project works on a massive climate change mitigation project, this nascent space society of capitalists, libertarians, reactionaries, and their lackeys is allowed to do whatever it wants outside of Earth's orbit. Eventually the last of the supply launches cease, and it's do or die. Using their stolen wealth, they manage to just barely establish a stable space economy that goes from Earth's Lagrange points, to Mars, and even the asteroids. It relies primary on large orbital stations, spun up to 1G, that receive unlimited energy from the sun and materials and volatiles from asteroids and intercepted comets.

There is an implicit threat here at all times: Leave us alone and we won't direct an asteroid at Earth. Vulnerable and recovering, the socialist nations of Earth make no moves against these "Spacers" as long as they stay out of low Earth orbit. Secretly, China and Russia (or their successor states) place weapons platforms in orbit. A promise of mutually assured destruction. Nobody can hide in space.

Over time (let's say it's around 2200ish), the world socialist project becomes a truly unified Earth government, living conditions are massively improved, and the Earth has a global baby boom as people again have something to live for and a world to bring up a family in. Tentative diplomatic agreements are made with the Spacers to be granted sovereignty where they are established and even trade (such as Earth produced materials/supplies in exchange for zero gravity manufactured stuff). Capitalism after all can hyper accelerate development, and even in space it has done so. They are always kept on a leash by Earth, but there is a sort of arms race cold war that develops.

As the terrestrial work week shortens to 30, then 20, and even 15 hours (meanwhile Spacer workers work 60-70 hrs/week in appalling conditions), most of humanity takes time to build a vibrant cultural scene and large swaths of the population, with universal access to education, start forming research cadres and Earth's technological progress supercharges. Post-scarcity on Earth is a realistic horizon now, with both fusion and solar power becoming mature and widespread. Life extension using regenerative biomedical science means a healthy quality of life until 100 or more. Sexuality and families become flexible and post-capitalist outside of some local respected cultural and religious norms. Gender becomes post-gender, and some experimentation with further biological modification becomes common.

While most cultures maintain their integrity, there is a new "Terran" culture that begins to form that unites humankind as comrades and children of Earth. True AI is developed and put in service of humanity as a whole, allowing central planning and automation in service to the People and further accelerating cultural and scientific development.

The Industrial Fabricator, a fully automated factory capable of micron scale precision, combines with highly distributed networks of local fabs, artisans, and craftspeople to produce a new economy of true abundance (lol fuck off ezra).

All of this possible because the worst of the worst bled the planet dry, and were forced off while the bulk of humanity spent generations planting trees, pushing back deserts, evacuating and housing the vulnerable, and rebuilding the husks the capitalists left behind. Often they did not even see significant results in their lifetimes, but did this knowing it would help their children and their comrade's children.

Earth, united and healed, returns to the Heavens

Soon the Earth government starts sending significant state assets into space. Research cadres, now with the state capacity of 21st century major nations, begin a flury of space exploration. Imperatives to secure the "wild west" of the last capitalists begins to drive manned expeditions and outposts. A research cadre maybe builds a Skyhook, space elevator, or magnetic accelerator to basically help assert it's authority over the Spacers and sovereignty over the Earth-Luna system. After all, the counter-revolutionaries (if there are any among them) cannot be allowed the high ground and dominance of the Solar System.

Meanwhile, the Spacers (divided into state-like oligarchic Corporate Blocs) entice bored young people of the large baby boom generation to offworld "adventure". Even in a developed socialist society, there will always be some enamored with being competitive and a promise of becoming a "king or queen", as well as reactionaries looking to escape or cultural/religious supremacists that see building an Orbital colony a way to escape the "godless commies". Counter-revolutionaries fail again and again, offering nothing to a content and purposeful global population, but mercifully are often simply exiled to Spacer colonies instead of being executed or imprisoned.

"Keep your capitalism and feudalism off our planet, you can go join your fellows up there. We'll even give you a free ride."

So basically the world socialist state slowly exerts it's influence against increasingly technologically backward Spacers, pushing them further into the frontier of the Solar system. A worker's revolt (supported by Earth) on the Mars colony establishes the Earth-Mars Collective. And the Spacers are pushed into the Outer System.

Advanced propulsion and power technologies are stolen by spies and Spacer AI systems, allowing them to scrape by. They remain backwards compared to Earth-Mars, but occasionally make their own breakthroughs often by just developing a novel but dangerous new method of using Earth tech. And of course, the elite of the Spacers live like kings of old, in orbital palaces. The vast majority are indentured servants, permanently indebted and highly policed and surveilled. Many of the wayward youth, betrayed, start seeds for militant unions and worker revolts. After all, they are typically educated and have connections back home.

And the Spacers need them. They always need fresh meat for the grinder.

So yeah this is just some basic background. Originally this was a project to fill my own timeline for Warhammer 40k's Age of Terra and Age of Technology and it can still be used by I might split it off into my own Kim Stanley Robinsonish semi-hard sci fi space opera. Like Expanse but more communist. With capitalism still there to add a dynamic setting and conflict (it's just too damn peaceful on Earth! everyone just hangs out at the theater and parks and wants for nothing!)

The Open Sign Language Animation Project (OSLAP, Esperanto: Aperta Signolingva Animacia Projekto, abbrev. ASLAP; Japanese: {自由手話|じゆうしゅわ}アニメプロジェクト, romanized Jiyū Shuwa Anime Purojekuto) is an official partnership between the Japanese state-owned animation studio Musashino Animation and Locotian public broadcaster PDS (formerly PBS), to create publicly-available Blender files and other free animation assets based on popular anime films and TV series, for the purposes of creating sign language versions of these anime. OSLAP pioneered the techniques of slubbing ("sign language dubbing"); these techniques have since the beginning of OSLAP been used by other groups to create sign language versions of other films and series, both animated and live-action.

The Open Sign Language Animation Project was first announced on March 1, 2061, and was initiated by PDS for the purposes of creating programming in Hand Talk, a sign language which was designated as Locoti's primary national language the previous year. PDS had prior to OSLAP only dubbed films and series into Esperanto — Locoti's second national language — with only a Hand Talk interpreter in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The idea of completely remaking films and TV series in sign languages, rather than simply showing an interpreter on screen, came about from a belief that sign language remakes would be more immersive, legible and accurate, more effective as language learning resources, and would increase the prestige and public awareness of Hand Talk and other sign languages. The decision to remake classic anime specifically was primarily motivated by practical concerns.

Most of the anime remade by OSLAP are critically-acclaimed or extremely and enduringly popular across all age demographics and genders, particularly films and series created 50+ years ago. OSLAP slubs are released together as "golden collections"; as of 2080, these are the Studio Ghibli Golden Collection, the Animated Auteurs' Golden Collection, the Rumiko Takahashi Golden Collection, the World Masterpiece Theater Golden Collection, the Kyoto Animation Golden Collection, and the Magical Girl Golden Collection.

Although OSLAP follows the Coordinating Body's Sustainable Computing Guidelines, the project's use of motion capture technology, machine learning technology, and other technologies which increase the water footprint, electricity consumption and render times for the animations, have raised sustainability concerns among some critics. At the same time, although OSLAP has been praised as a mainstay of a new "golden age" of Deaf representation and sign language in popular media, the project has also been criticized for not involving the Deaf community enough in the animation process.

Process

Each slub begins with a planning stage. In this stage, which commonly employs crowdsourcing, anime are checked for considerations unique to that film or series, and the individual scenes are checked for the following^[non-exhaustive list]:

• mid-sentence cuts
• close-ups
• props or walls obscuring a character's hands or face
• narrators or other disembodied voices
• characters speaking out of frame
• characters with their backs turned to the camera or each other
• characters being spoken to while their eyes are closed
• scenes in low lighting or cramped spaces
• characters moving quickly or chaotically while speaking
• characters thinking
• characters speaking with both hands full
• characters wearing mittens
• deformation of a character's face or hands
• characters attempting to get each other's attention
• important sound effects whose sources are out-of-frame or not visible to the characters

The findings from this process are compiled into a report on whether the anime is considered to be "viable" for slubbing, and if so, what challenges must be overcome and which changes must be made. This report informs the script and storyboard, which are generally created by Deaf people or CODAs. Hearing characters in slubbed anime are often rewritten to be Deaf.

OSLAP slubs will generally reuse as much as they can from the original spoken-language version of the anime, including sound effects and music, background art, special effects, other animation and assets, and parts of the script and storyboard which can remain unmodified. A few other tropes are commonly employed to minimize differences between the spoken and sign language versions of an anime, such as presenting a disembodied narrator as a person in front of a projection screen; presenting a character's thoughts using a shoulder angel or a "team in the brain"; or using a "bubble in the corner" to depict a character or sound off screen without needing to change the camera angle. Talking animals are often rewritten to communicate telepathically.

The characters themselves will use 3D models, often fan-made, with an array of shaders and other effects to make them appear two-dimensional and as close to the original art style and frame rate as possible. These effects constitute the bulk of machine learning technology use in OSLAP slubs, although machine learning may also see limited use in background art, storyboarding, and other stages of the animation process. Amateur slubbers using OSLAP's files may disable some or all of these effects to reduce render times.

Most character animation is not done by Musashino Animation itself, and is instead done by PDS' in-house slubbing studio — or by other professional or amateur slubbing studios around the world — using motion capture technology.

Note: said society is preindustrial and has ample access to flowing water, but not fossil fuels or radioactive deposits. It also has access to mountain hot springs, which I thought could also be used as "batteries" during times when streams freeze. This last point is what set him off.

He also really hates wind turbines.

Are there people in your world that just don't get it, and keep spouting opinions that make no sense given the context of your world or would be disastrous if actually implemented? What are some of the most common bad takes in your world and what makes them so bad?

Locoti (/ləˈkoʊti/ 🔊, Esperanto: Likotio /likoˈti.o/ 🔊), also called the United Leagues among other names, sometimes referred to totum pro parte as Turtle Island, and officially known as the Union of the Leagues of Commons of Turtle Island (Esperanto: la Unio de la Ligoj de Komunejoj de Testuda Insulo), is a socialist state in northern Abya Yala. Styling itself as “the Decolonial State”, Locoti is a federation of 100 leagues of commons (LOCs), the most populous of which are the LOC for Lenapehoking (which includes Locoti’s most populous city, Manaháhtaan-Liberigo), the LOC for the Haudenosaunee Lands, the LOC for Tovaangar, and the CLOC for New Afrika. The capital of Locoti is Nova Profeturbo, a planned city named in reference to Prophetstown, a multi-tribal village founded in 1808 by Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa during their efforts to resist US settler expansion, and destroyed in the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. Locoti’s national anthem, simply titled “Potpourri” (Esperanto: “Kvodlibeto”, lit. “A Quodlibet”), is a medley of folk songs from different constituent nations, beginning with “Shí Naashá”, a song about the return of the Diné from Bosque Redondo in 1868, which became a popular marching song among Indigenous militias during the Locotian Revolution (2057-2059).

With an area of 19.8 million km^2^ spread across seven time zones, Locoti is the world’s second largest country by area, behind only the Soviet Union. Locoti comprises roughly the northern four-fifths of Turtle Island per se, stretching from Unangam Tanangin in the far west to Taqamkuk in the far east; from Umingmak Nuna in the Arctic Archipelago in the far north — which is the northernmost point of Abya Yala when excluding Greenland — to the Florida Keys in the far south. Locoti’s only land border is with Mexico, an open border defined by the course of the Rio Grande and a set of arbitrary straight lines set by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the end of the First US-Mexican War. Locoti’s territorial waters also border those of Cuba, the Bahamas, Greenland, and the Soviet Union.

With a population of 450 million people, Locoti is the world’s seventh largest country by population, behind only India, China, the European Federation, East Africa, the Soviet Union, and Indonesia. With an estimated 430+ languages spoken or signed within its borders, Locoti is also among the world’s most linguistically diverse countries. The most common first languages in Locoti remain English, Spanish, and French, all of these being Western European languages introduced to Abya Yala during the continent’s colonization. The number of native speakers of English has however decreased significantly in recent decades as a result of Locoti’s investment in immersion programs for endangered languages during the Crush Anglo Chauvinism campaign. This campaign also established Hand Talk and Esperanto as the primary and secondary official languages of Locoti’s federal government respectively, making Locoti the only sovereign state in the world with a sign language as its primary official language, and one of only three sovereign states with a constructed language as an official language — the others being the European Federation, which has Esperanto and Interslavic as its official languages; and lutruwita, whose official language is palawa kani.

Locoti is the successor to the United States of America (USA). The USA was a settler-colonial bourgeois dictatorship declared in 1776 by settlers revolting against the British Empire during the colonization of Abya Yala. Many of these settlers, including notable figures among them such as George Washington, owned chattel slaves stolen from West Africa, or descended from such victims of human trafficking. The fundamental unsustainability of this slave system as shown by Nat Turner’s rebellion and the Raid on Harpers Ferry would eventually culminate in the First US Civil War (1861-1865), but not before the USA would send freedmen to colonize Liberia out of the belief that this would prevent them from organizing slave revolts. The First US Civil War concluded with the formal abolition of chattel slavery and led into the First Reconstruction (1865-1877). However, the newly-former chattel slaves and their descendants, who are today known as New Afrikans, would continue to be exploited for forced labor, as well as segregated, lynched, mistreated by police, never compensated for their injuries under chattel slavery, and generally oppressed, until the Locotian Revolution. New Afrikans are today the largest ethnic group in the highly pluralistic society of Locoti, and their cultural output continues to be enjoyed worldwide.

Following the Second World War, the USA, largely unscathed by the war, and engorged on the profits of stolen land and labor, quickly vassalized much of the world as the new head of the imperialist system. The decline of imperialism in the 21st century led to a period known as the Great Farce (c. 2015-2050), characterized by the rise of Donald Trump, the annexation of Greenland and Canada into the USA, the disastrous Second US-Mexican War, and in 2036 the St. Lawrence Crisis triggered the Second US Civil War (2037-2042) — another violent internal conflict between bourgeois factions, this time also triggering the Deluge of Elephants, the greatest refugee crisis in human history, in which approximately 72 million Usonians fled to Europe. The descendants of the refugees from the Second US Civil War are today known as Americans, and this group played a crucial role in the prelude to the Locotian Revolution, and during the revolution itself, which happened at the tail end of the Second Reconstruction (2042-2057).

Critiquers: "The bad guys in your setting are cartoonishly evil. No one in real life actually behaves like that."

I can count the number of timelines (especially on Reddit) with alternate socialist states which both 1) has the aforementioned states survive and thrive and 2) aren't meant to be dystopian/bad end scenarios on one hand. End of History Liberal Triumphalism/Fatalism is extremely pervasive, even in the minds of avowed communists.

If only some more reading was done on how the dissolution of the USSR and Eastern Bloc was far from inevitable. Socialism Betrayed is a good start, even if it's hardly comprehensive.

And I don't want any cop-out answers like "Oh these guys are pacifists cause they make others do the fighting for them", I mean a genuine faction of people with power, who reject war, even when it's convenient for them to do war, and even when going to war would be considered the right thing to do by the masses, out of a genuine principle of pacifism. How do you make those people seem like a convincing faction?

worldbuilding.stackexchange.com is the main worldbuilding forum on the internet, or one of them. It's always near the top of my search results for worldbuilding.

The hive-mind there is totally content with telepathic dragons, but if you suggest that an Bronze Age economy might not have run on Thatcherite principles, they'll say that's "too unrealistic".

• It is human nature to work for rewards, and praise, and respect, and to live better than average. But communism, if strictly enforced, demands everyone live the average life. – No it doesn't mate, read theory. Communism isn't where everybody lives in the same type of house, eats the same food, wears the same clothes. Communism is collectively manage means-of-production.

Post more nuggets like this.

Part of worldbuilding is building different economies. There have been non-monetary economies (hundreds of them, or thousands, thoughout history), there have been gift-economies, Palace economies... but people still want 'worldbuilding' to only be market-based.

Developing a couple drafts for a creative project that's been simmering in the back of my mind for years and it's very much a pretty standard genre fare in military sci-fi with characters that are in a specops fireteam doing wetwork operator shit fightin' evil aliens that want to wipe out humanity

The more I flesh out the plot and characters in my head, the more I feel like I'm relying on trope-y plots and character types, and was wondering if anyone has advice on how to write characters that fulfill the role of a stock character type in that kind of story that still have some depth and personality that isn't just "the no nonsense leader," "wiseass with a heart of gold" "gentle giant" "stoic man of few words with a tragic past" "bad bitch that's got something to prove" "antsy pessimist that's worried the Intel's off and the op's gonna go sideways" etc

I'm working on names and personalities and character designs and they're starting to feel like they're starting to come together and I have a sense of their interpersonal dynamics, but I keep feeling like it's starting to get too derivative or predictable and feel like the beats for bringing out some characterization naturally with incidental dialogue as the plot unfolds or little character details or moments seem too shoehorned and was wondering if any writers have some tips for how to add some of that color to a script that feels natural to the genre and momentum of a story without being like "and NOW I'll add some depth to character x before we move on"

Thanks in advance

Sometimes you're trying to justify things existing in your world, and you come up with a single explanation that covers a bunch of results and it is elegant and feels satisfying.

(3 minute read)

I'm trying to provide historical justification for my alternate history world – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 – I say 'alternate history' but I really only designed an alternate present, and now have to fill in the history.

Overview

A tribal social structure existed all over the world – most of precolonial North America, the Tiv and Igbo, the Bedouin, the Celts, the Germanic tribes, the Eurasian nomads – many other cases, essentially universal – and what if that remained the social structure amid 21st century technology, instead of states being the predominant form?

Terran history: Crises weaken states

The Roman Empire was the most powerful state, and then it fell from The Crisis of the Third Century. Wikipedia says, "The Antonine Plague that preceded the Crisis of the Third Century sapped manpower from Roman armies and proved disastrous for the Roman economy.... From 249 to 262, the Plague of Cyprian devastated the Roman Empire to such a degree that some cities, such as the city of Alexandria, experienced a 62% decline in population." There were plagues and crop failures, and Rome fell, and tribal barbarians were also hit, but less strongly so, and ended up conquering Italy.

That's a map of 476, of the end of the crisis. Syagrius is a Roman remnant (a Romnant har har). Franks are on Roman Law. Apart from the Eastern Roman Empire, most other places are tribal confederacies. But straight after this map, Francia goes on an expansionist rampage, including the French conquest of Britain in 1066.

That's a map of 800 AD. See how Rome's children have reconquered a lot?

My worldbuilding goal is that the Celts, Goths, Suebi etc. are the guys who end up with good ships+good guns in the 1400s. That's the trick to winning the world: good ships+good guns in the 1400s.

Wikipedia on the Migration Period says: "The collapse of centralized control severely weakened the sense of Roman identity in the provinces....Ultimately, the Germanic groups in the Western Roman Empire were accommodated without "dispossessing or overturning indigenous society", and they maintained a structured and hierarchical (but attenuated) form of Roman administration..." [so my alternate history would have to hit Rome even harder than that] "...In contrast, in the east, Slavic tribes maintained a more "spartan and egalitarian" existence bound to the land "even in times when they took their part in plundering Roman provinces". Their organizational models were not Roman, and their leaders were not normally dependent on Roman gold for success" – the theme here is how adverse conditions, particularly plague and climate conditions that disrupt routine agriculture, give a competitive advantage to people who live a more resourceful, less civilised existence.

---

Much later, the Crisis of the late Middle Ages also followed a big plague, and it led to working class revolts. It's worth mentioning that the tribal areas of Europe, like the Basques and the Gaels, suffered less under the Black Death.

James C. Scott

Some themes in the work of James C. Scott

• His book Against the Grain argues as follows: grain-based agriculture is predictable, plannable, legible, so it leads to centralised power and centralised states. Hunter-foragers eat diverse unpredictable food and can't be taxed. The first states appeared in Mesopotamia when wheat was domesticated. It's not about abundance (forests are more abundant than wheat fields), it's about predictability/plannability/legibility-to-a-statist-bureaucracy. It follows that crop failures (e.g. caused by the dust of a volcanic eruption, or by solar cycles) would weaken states and shift the balance of power to Zomian-type peoples.

• His book The Art of Not Being Governed argues as follows: non-state societies are a phenomenon on the fringes, fleeing the evils of centralized states. And he often mentions epidemics as being one of the evils they flee. It follows that epidemics would weaken states and shift the balance of power to Zomian-type peoples.

The material effects of a plague

If I add another crisis like the 3rd century and the 14th century, say in the 1st century.... then Rome remains weaker, Rome only partly takes Gaul and Britain. When Rome falls in the mid 400s, the Franks and the Byzantines and other people who are on the Roman system do persist (same as Terra) but weaker. They are less successful in expanding up to 800. In 1066, they may take England, but reverse the outcome of the 1277-1283 England-Wales war (so Wales wins) and the 1296-1357 Scottish wars (Scotland wins).

Europe was able to really really pull ahead because it navigated both the Atlantic and the coast of Africa in the 1490s. It opened up the world to extractive exploitation. But what if instead, the Europeans who did this were on a mutual-aid mode of production? They open up the world to mutual aid, including martial.

Celts and Suebi from Europe's Western fringe are in conflict with Imperialist European enemies like the Franks and the Byzantines. They meet Mayan Tlaxcalan who are having a similar conflict with the Imperialist Aztecs. Together they ally and crush their enemies. This concludes the Middle Ages, the Modern Period then starts, but under a mutual-aid mode of production.

[Posted September 27th, edited into a better and more succinct version Sept 29th]

The world I have been describing – 1, 2, 3, 4 – is governed by democratic councils.

Small councils make local decisions. A bunch of those glom together into something more powerful but less intimate. For some decisions, this can even be global, an anarchist version of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Anarchist FAQ says "anarchists have very clear ideas on what to “replace” the state with (namely a federation of communes based on working class associations)."

So I had to worldbuild a system of confederated democratic groups.

Anarchist governance in my solarpunk world work like this –

Tribes. A Māori hapū. A Greek δῆμος. A Mapuche lof.

Think of this as being about 2500 to 4000 people, but don't worry about the number too much, it doesn't affect the democratic arithmetic if the tribe is bigger or smaller.

This is the smallest unit with official bureaucratic existence. Some have territory marked by boundary-stones or similar, others are totally nomadic, and some only have a rough idea of their territory. The tribe has its website. It has its code of law.

It might also have a totem of some sort that represents it. Maybe it is a standing stone covered in bronze. Customary Law of the Haya Tribe states: "Every clan has its totem". Of course, the most famous totems are the wooden poles of the Tlingit and Salish. The English word totem derives from the Algonquian word odoodem [oˈtuːtɛm] meaning "(his) kinship group".

Registering members is a special responsibility of the tribe, that will become important when we start looking at confederations. It's basically a big family with a roll book.

In Terra, the unit that tracks citizenship is faceless: the country/nation-state that issues passports and accepts or denies citizenship applications. In this world (which I am thinking of naming Mandala) membership is tracked by something much more like a family.

• It must keep track of births, marriages, deaths.
• Membership is by birth in >80% of cases
• This tribe is what recognises the marriage. Marriage brings one more person into the family.
• People can be adopted into the family, like becoming a naturalized citizen of a Terran nation-state.
• From the 1990s onwards, all this is tracked digitally.
• They must let neighbouring tribes audit their census. If they are accused of inflating their numbers for political power, a larger assembly rules on the matter. If found guilty, they lose all representation for five years.

Imagine yourself now. Take a deep breath of unpolluted air through your nostrils. You are wearing the traditional clothing of your ancestors. Your mind thinks in their ancestral tongue. You know that within a 5 minute walk, you have 200 friendly cousins ready to support you. You have your responsibilities to them too. But technology has made life not-too-hard. Imagine it.

Kinship rules vary from place to place, as anthropologists have written about. There are tribes all over the world, but no centralised rule for how they're run. They are sovereign and follow their own ways.

Restorative justice is seen all over the world: Somali xeer law that gives a payment called a mag to victims. Germanic Law gives a payment called wergeld.

The tribal assembly has the power to settle disputes among its members through such restorative justice. It can hold court, pass judgement. If the assembly did choose to put someone to death no authority could tell them no: no police or state stands above the tribe. But customary law is normally restorative and the punishment is transfer of property. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid discusses this. What about crimes that are not internal to one tribe? We're getting to that.

Confederacies of different sizes, and the decisions they have to make

• Groups of a few tens of thousands up to about 150,000 people – These correspond to the Māori 'iwi', the Mapuche 'aillarehue', the Greek 'πόλεις'. A group this size should have its own small hospital with a few hundred beds, and that hospital will need to be assigned resources. Library too. If it is by a bay, it will have an open ocean farm. It may manage a lake or a forest as a commons and will control the hunting season or fishing limits of the commons. It will cut deals with various guilds (see https://hexbear.net/post/596720) to supply it with WiFi, with bicycles, etc. in exchange for nice houses and good food.
• Groups of more than about 150,000 people but under a million – This might be a small city or a good-sized rural region. It will need a more complex, specialised hospital with an emergency ward, so it will have to assign resources to that. It might maintain a shipyard. A city of 750,000 people will have to run urban transport networks, shared bicycle schemes. Will also arrange contracts with guilds. It might arrange a barter-contract with another tribal unit: for example if this tribe lives on the coast, and 50 miles inland there is another tribe; we have too much fish, you lot have too much milk, let's arrange a barter contract for one year. How many kg of fish per litre of milk? That will have to be negotiated.
• Groups of millions of people – These include nations you have heard of: the Scots, the Serbs, the Danes, the Finns, the Dinka, Bosnians, Armenians, Moldovans. The Nilotic peoples have a total population of 8 million, including the Dinka (2 million), Nuer (1.8 million), and Maasai (1.2 million). Groups this size will also arrange contracts with guilds. Maintains important websites like wikis and maps. Organise sporting contests: who's the best high-jumper in Serbia? Organise seasonal festivals; tourists come from all over the world to these. A unit this big will need a train system and that will have to be managed and allocated resources. It will have to cut a deal with the microchip-fabrication guild to get a chip fab in their territory, make sure the citizens have electronics, and in return give the guildmasters perks like nice houses. Most assemblies pay the Electricians' Guild in nice food and nice homes, but this one over here is lucky: they have a copper mine on their land, so they swap copper for Electricians' services – the council is what negotiates this sort of contract. Owns and maintains a top-level hospital with every kind of medical specialist. Declare war.

Here's a screenshot from a pdf on FIFA's website –

So a million-man confederacy must staff and clean and maintain a 35-thousand seater stadium and so on. This is an example of how small population-groups run small humble facilities, big groups run big facilities. Same with small local libraries versus big libraries, etc.

• Groups of tens of millions of people – Now we are talking about the world's major ethnolinguistic groups. There are about 150-200 such in the world. Each such federation sends a team to the World Cup and the Olympics. Korea, Italy, France, Afghanistan, Australia, Taiwan, 'the Norsemen' as a whole, 'the Celts' as a whole, the Fula, Yoruba, Igbo, Amhara, Zulu. The Tokyo Metropolitan Area has a population of 41 million in Terra; in this world it's less (the world is less urbanised) but still around 27 million.

The major cultural zones of North America, e.g. the Plains Indians, each form confederacies of a few tens of millions –

Groups of near a billion people – These might run something as ambitious as a space program. Here are the main ones (though see below about fluidity) –

• Black Africa
• All the Arabs, Turks, and Semites together
• Pan-American
• The white race
• Hindu South Asia plus bits of West Asia
• Buddhist East Asia plus bits of Oceania
• Austronesia and Australia

Fluidity and fixity

The tribes, the ones of about 4000 people, those are fixed. You're not a member of one tribe today and a different one tomorrow.

But assemblies can be called to make decisions for any group, it need not be a standing organisation. Examples of fluid group-formation:

• A Blackfoot Indian volunteers for an assembly of the Americas one month, and then the next month an assembly of the world's nomads where they discuss issues that affect nomads.
• An Inuit from the north of north America volunteers for an assembly of the Americas one month, and then the next month a polar assembly where he meets with Siberians and they discuss doing a deal with a guild that builds seasonal thermal energy storage, a solarpunk technology for places with long cold winters.

☝️there's the circumpolar federation – they have things to talk about sometimes☝️

Now that's not to say the edges of the confederacy changes every issue. Rather, it means that the edges don't constrain people from forming whatever assembly they choose. Most the time, assemblies follow the same natural boundaries. For example the 150-200 groups of tens of millions of people mentioned above – those each meet as a matter of regularity.

Assemblies as courts. Different levels of dispute

A fight between two neighbours is settled by the tribe. They give their ruling.

A fight between two tribes is settled by a larger confederacy. The confederacy must be large enough to impose their ruling. Yet it wouldn't tend to be much bigger: no point involving people on the other side of the world. A Māori iwi might have about 80 hapū within it. If two of those are having a fight (maybe about land, maybe about revenge), the assembly of the iwi could give a ruling. The land belongs to this hapū not that one. Instead of blood revenge, you must transfer this list of goods to settle the matter. If the hapū rebel against the iwi's judgement, force may be used.

If it's a major war, like between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the World Assembly may be the ones to rule. This is analogous to the U.N. sending peacekeepers.

How assemblies work

• People volunteer to be members. A volunteer must be seconded, and thirded. Anyone with this becomes a candidate. Candidates' names are put into a random draw. (This excludes totally incompetent people. An objection to anarchism is "we need smart people ruling, not random people!" This system is some check that you must be a passably functional grown-up before you can be on the council.)
• Remember how tribes maintain a population-registry? The population under the assembly is counted up from these. Children are included in the count.
• 100 names are picked at random. One hundred is a nice number for deliberation, everyone gets speaking-time, not too noisome.
• A two-thirds majority can pass a decision.

Ensuring minority rights in the random draw

The population of France is 68,250,000, so 100 representatives are picked at random.

3.36% of Frenchies live in the Lyon Metropolitan Area.

In a perfectly fair draw, they'd usually get 3 seats. However, about 19.5% of the time, Lyon will end up with 0 or 1 seats (that's a binomial calculation to figure that out). That's a problem. What if some big decision gets made that affects them?

To avoid this, the people of Lyon (i.e. their city assembly), demands formal recognition from the French body. When it gets that recognition, it can overrule any draw that robs it of more than one seat.

Any population-group that constitutes 2.5% or more of a larger body has the right to demand this recognition.

A recognised cell must accept any draw that gives them ([the closest whole number to their proportion]-1). But they reject any draw where their seats are two below the median.

These rules are restrictive. It'll take about 3000 draws to get one within the bounds of acceptability for all of 30-40 cells. But doing 3000 random draws is something a computer can do in under one second.

The World Council

The World Council meets to decide things like –

• Should we allocate resources to eradicate mosquitoes? Let the council hear from various scientific experts about the pros, cons, likelihood of success, amount of required resources.

• Should we embark upon building a global vactrain network?

• Should we embark upon building a space elevator?

• Should we send a global peacekeeping force to stop Armenia and Azerbaijan from fighting?

The heading 'How assemblies work' describes how all assemblies work from the tribe to the continent-sized ones. However, for the World Council, there are two tweaks to the rules –

• Two meetings run in parallel. So 100 people meet, deliberate, and vote, and so do 100 more people over there. Two equal assemblies, and both must pass the motion.
• After the World Council has made its decision, that is then passed down to the continent-level assemblies. Each of these has veto power. Even a very populous Asia should not be able to dictate to Africa. The formal rule is: any assembly speaking for more than 10% of the world's population can veto a decision made by the World Assembly.

We know how the representatives are picked and how they vote, but who can PROPOSE a motion?

Popular vote: If a proposal goes out on the Internet, and 1% of the population of that unit sign it, the council must consider the proposal. e.g. the world has 8000 million people, so if 80 million people sign a petition saying 'fuck mosquitoes kill em all', the World Council must consider that. Or for a city of 1,000,000, the initiative would have to be signed by 10,000 people to get in front of the council.

Briefing is important

Stanford University run a Deliberative Democracy Lab to explore councils of citizens debating and deciding things. Their system is lame, and I'm about to tell you why. Here they had Meta (i.e. facebook) get a deliberative assembly together to discuss tech policy and it says "A distinguished Advisory Committee vetted the briefing materials for the deliberations and provided many of the experts for the plenary sessions."

Here's the problem. You get random assemblies of neutral, fair citizens, put them in a room to deliberate. Good start. Then you spoonfeed them propaganda materials from facebook inc. upon which to base their decision, that is undue influence from facebook inc.

The councils will need to hear from experts on medical systems, ecology, trains, etc. They deliberate and make informed decisions. Just like the way the assembly is picked and votes is democratic, the system for picking briefing materials must be equally democratic.

Who can brief the council?

Same deal: popular vote:

• People want an expert/group/intellectual to have the right to give briefing materials, so they vote for him to get part of the briefing. The briefing materials could be written or video. The person/group with the most votes is given a chunk of speaking time (I'm not sure, maybe 2 hours). Then the 2nd-most popular person, then the 3rd. This continues until the speaking time (I'm not sure, maybe 24 hours) is used up.

Here, btw, is where a powerful, influential person might gain political sway. The heavy use of sortilege blocks influential politicians from appearing in the system. But if you had an influential public intellectual like Noam Chomsky, everybody would vote for the council to have to listen to his brief.

This would often include guilds: like if its a medical issue obviously people want to hear from the medical experts and they medical guild should have no problem getting votes.

One week term-limits lmao

A paper describing traditional West African governance says "In general there were no officeholders; only representatives of groups" and that is my ideal here. You don't become a representative for a four-year term or a one-year term; you represent your people at ONE meeting. Then the lottery happens again for the next meeting. This prevents ego, keeps things nice and anarchist.

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This is the most democratic, most anarchist thing I can think of. It's inspired a bit by Council Communism, a bit by Bookchin/Öcalan's democratic confederalism, a bit by traditional tribal systems, a bit by deliberative democracy, a bit by mathematics.

Long ago, the world lived in a relative peace. Guided by nature, the people lived off of the land, paying their respects to the gods that assisted them in their daily lives. Then, the Divine arrived. Its light blessed all, allowing for great prosperity in exchange for the Luminae people's devotion. Declaring the unified Holy Kingdom of Auran, the Divine maintained a more physical presence than the gods of nature that came before it. The Divine could be seen, could be talked to, and could be felt. It was by all means their leader, as well as the arbiter of their salvation, as they saw it.

30 years ago, the Auran Federation broke out into war. Now a nation ruled by a parliament and a president, corruption and exploitation had greatly expanded, especially in the magic-rich province of Iberia. As a result, the people of Iberia began the Iberian Revolution, overthrowing their provincial government. A declaration of independence was made official, and the revolutionaries formed the People's Republic of Iberia. Outraged at this aggression, the federation declared war on the new nation in order to reclaim it. The Iberians by all means should have lost. However, they re-discovered a long dormant power that hadn't been used since before the era of the Divine.

Earth magic is a classification applied to spells that use the caster as the source rather than a god or patron. It requires years of study, years that the Iberian revolutionaries had spent reading through ancient texts that were forbidden by the federation. They had waited to rebel until this magic was mastered, and it was exactly what balanced the scales. Earth magic was not only unaffected by the Divine like elemental magic, but could counter the power the Divine provided to its followers.

The war was still one that was devastating, on both sides. The Divine Church therefore had a decision to make. Keep the war going, or try to restore peace and become a mediator. So, they organized talks between both Iberia and Auran, and they came to a decision. Iberia would maintain all of their land, but not reach past their boundaries. Auran would cede the two provinces bordering Iberia to the church in exchange for an end to the war and the promise of a pacified Iberia. The church then took the provinces it had received and formed the Divine Caliphate, a church turned nation. After five years, the fighting had finally ended, and the war was officially over. A few things happened with this resolution, though. Things that would change the course of Luminae forever.

The Divine had strained itself during the war, giving greater powers and boons to the nation it had created all those years ago. As a result, it seemingly dissipated, fading out of physical existence like the gods of nature had done before it. The Earth magic the Iberians had used in the war also vanished, which was not at all expected. How could something they seemingly controlled just dissapear? The answer is still not known today, though the People's Republic has dedicated many resources to uncovering the reason for its disappearance. Other than these occurrences, the world moved on from the conflict. Auran and Iberia even began to trade with each other, seemingly putting behind them the wounds of conflict. Behind the facade was a bitterness, though. The ruling class of Auran didn't like having to pay full price for resources from the magic-rich lands, while Iberia never forgot the other provinces of people they left behind. As for the Caliphate? It maintained the Divine Church in the two nations, while also having the Caliphate act as a buffer between them. People of one nation could not reach the other without passing through the Caliphate, after all, and the church had managed to put themselves into quite a powerful position.

This brings the world to the present day, a day where people continued to live in a tense peace, a peace that would not continue for long...

It would be really cool if I could find out how to make a map, wouldn't it? Sure, I could use existing maps and put my nations over them, but wouldn't it be so much better if it was more original?

The world itself is something newer to me. I haven't really considered a fantasy setting, even though I love fantasy, though the idea of a conflict and world that goes into its politics is something I've wanted to do for a while. Nothing here is concrete or final, and I'm open to suggestions and feedback, but I needed to make sure I have some sort of groundwork, some sort of world that the story I want to tell can take place in. I also want the characters I'm writing to feel like they live in a world, in a context, and so making sure I don't end up with a Fire Emblem 7 kind of situation is pretty important to me. Let me know what you think! Should names be changed? What should the names of cities be within the countries? What should the Earth/Dark magic be called? I look forward to hearing what you all have to say.

The solarpunk tribal world is detailed here, here, and here.

I built the world because it's what I wanted to see in the late-20th to early-21st century. But it's weak on the question of how that came to be. So I thought some theory-experts might be able to mutual-aid me 😉

Why did this world come to be?

• Economically: A moneyless world where labour is organised by kinship obligations and local cultures are self-sufficient for the basics.

• Politically: Öcalan-style democratic confederalism: your local folkmoot or veche makes local decisions. They send representatives to the country-level popular assembly, they in turn send representatives to the continent-level popular assembly, and they in turn send representatives to the world-level popular assembly which does things like stops wars from escalating. Russian doll democracy.

Ok I think I've laid out the question well enough now: why did the economy become/remain moneyless and clannish, and why did democratic confederalism become powerful? And how can this be explained in terms of class struggle? Let me know if there's confusion and I'll edit.

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Now, towards an answer –

• Actually a lot of the inspiration for it all came from Mutual Aid Among the Barbarians, and less so Mutual Aid in the Mediæval City: clans living together helping each other. Comrade K mentions "The Teutons, the Celts, the Scandinavians, the Slavonians, and others", and the chapter is largely about the Russian mir. So should I say they struggled against Roman/feudal systems and won, beating out manoralism that later became enclosure and capitalism?

• Another thing I could use: around 1100AD in America, Hiawatha creates the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederacy with five tribes and later added a 6th.... What if in the alternate history this confederated more and more tribes and became really huge? But that's not historical materialism.

• The first reply I ever got said, "I feel like, at first, you need to address a kind of Columbian Exchange"... but what if instead of crossing the Atlantic, they cross the Pacific?? So it's an exchange between say Chinese societies and ones like the Tlingit.

• I have lots of other little historical tidbits that could force to the tribal side of the dialectic: Pashtun with their jirga assemblies, Chechens as free and equal as wolves, the stateless Igbo, and many others.

Not to be confused with Deluge (Poland-Lithuania).

The Deluge of Elephants, also known as simply the Deluge, was the largest refugee crisis in human history. It resulted in a major economic crisis and health crisis in much of Europe as an estimated 72 million Usonians fleeing the Second US Civil War migrated to the region in the five-year period between 2037 and 2042, triggering multiple disease outbreaks that together killed approximately 4 million people. The name of the Deluge of Elephants is in reference to the "White Elephant Brigade", a derogatory term for the Usonian migrants, associated with European tabloids' assertion that the United States of America in the midst of its second civil war was also waging an economic war against Europe by sending refugees to the region as white elephants — "possessions which are difficult to dispose of, and whose cost of upkeep greatly outweighs their value".

Europeans' attitudes towards the Usonian refugees was at the beginning of the crisis known to be largely highly positive, even with the resulting material strain. However, attitudes towards the refugees soured as the crisis deepened, famously resulting in the trend of "Laser Troopers" who would assemble in large numbers to shine illicit laser pointers into the cockpits of airplanes carrying Usonian refugees. On the other hand, though the term "oh-ro" today has more positive connotations, it was originally used to mock Europeans seen as overly sympathetic to the Usonian refugees. The term "oh-ro", or "to sing oh-ro", was specifically originally in reference to the Dublin "Deaf Ears" incident of 2038, where a flash mob performed the Irish folk song "Óró! 'Sé do bheatha 'bhaile" to welcome a group of Usonian refugees at Dublin Airport who had, unbeknownst to the mob, been deafened by an uncontrolled decompression incident mid-flight.

The first amclub was founded at Saint-Louis Middle School in Liège in 2041 in response to widespread bullying of Usonian/American students; this is considered to be the recognized beginning of the Usonian-American split. Even today, Americans are still commonly distinguished by their relationship to the Deluge of Elephants: Americans whose families have continuously lived in Europe since prior to the Deluge are today known as Old Dogs, and the descendants of the Deluge-era refugees are known as the New Litter.

The Deluge of Elephants, its origins, and its impact are of much interest to scholars. Consensus holds that the bourgeois factions of the Second US Civil War intended for the relocation of settlers to Europe among other regions to be a temporary measure, such that they could return to settler life postbellum. The ultimate failure of this plan is attributed to the state of class conflict in Europe and the USA at the time, and to contradictory interests and changing dynamics within the bourgeoisie of either region. The exact details of this analysis remain hotly debated, however.

Scholars take particular interest in how the crisis was presented by liberal political parties and media in Europe, who were criticized for xenophobic statements, scapegoating, and opportunistically co-opting and distorting the language and rhetoric of leftists during the crisis. Scholars also take particular interest in how the crisis was exacerbated by capitalism, including government policies criticized as irresponsible or as wealth transfers to the bourgeoisie; and scholars continue to debate what the exact motives of the European and Usonian bourgeoisie were during the crisis, including the degree to which the crisis was engineered versus accidental.

The Deluge of Elephants and the resulting Usonian-American split resulted in a high level of class consciousness among Americans. This is widely considered to be a major part of the prelude to both the Locotian Revolution and the Socialist Revolution in Europe.

Most of the cultures in the non-colonial solarpunk universe – written about here, here, and here – are also in your crappy universe. The Merina, the Marra, the Māori are all there – but with more dignity, able to look anyone in the eye as an economic and cultural equal.

Yet technology has also created newer cultures not seen on Terra. These new groups couldn't but follow the only pattern they know: living in mutual aid groups self-sufficiently within the ecological limits.

One such neo-tribe is the Cloud Nomads. Sky Truckers. They emulate the traditional nomadic groups that surround them, but with the new addition of solar-powered airships.

Their ships are solar-powered, taking advantage of the higher solar irradiation found at high altitudes. The typical ship is similar in size to the LCAT60T airship in your universe. That means is has about 60 metric tonnes of lifting power. About 65% of this is for hauling cargo. The rest? That's home. Your home in the clouds. An airship might be home to about 22 people: their bedroom, bathroom, shared kitchen all lightly lifted by a helium-hydrogen mix.

Everything must be light. We love balsa wood. Some furniture is made using tensioned bits of fabric and rope. Light and airy. As a crew member, you are allowed 1000kg (less on some ships) for everything: that's your bed, your water ration, your body, everything. Better bring an e-reader.

We like silk, it's is a part of our lifestyle. From the year 2031 onwards, we start to use a lot of spider silk the biopunk guild has learned how to produce. We use it for clothing and rigging, and in the construction of our ships. Spiders are creatures of the sky.

Karl Marx said: "Trading nations, properly so called, exist in the ancient world only in its interstices, like the gods of Epicurus in the Intermundia, or like Jews in the pores of Polish society."

This world doesn't depend on trade much, yet there is some. Sky Truckers play an important rôle in that trade: bringing goods to spots that aren't easily reached by sea or other means. Other cultures are nearly totally self-sufficient. The Sky Truckers a little less so, they are Marx's intersticial tribe. They are self-sufficient for energy and water, but only half so for food. Cloudmen depend on landlubbers for some food, heavy industry, and of course for their ships to be built. Yet they harvest the food of the sky as much as they can: it would be unthinkable to not feed yourself.

Some cultures live by a sacred river that gives them life. The cultures of the Sahara manage their qanat through the generations. Skymen have no rivers or wells: they live on clouds. Their ships can unfurl a mesh net like the wings of some immense mechanical bat, and fly through a cloud, filling its tanks with the purest of water. (These tanks are only big enough to hold a few days' water: lightness is always on their mind.)

Eat the sky. Ancient Greeks ate lots of species of birds, including mallards, pigeons, blackbirds, larks, sparrows, and cranes.

You idiots hunted the passenger pigeon to extinction but our world did not. They're a reliable food source when our wanderings take us to North America.

We go to Africa in June-August and participate in the quelea hunt with nets deployed from our ships. For small birds, the trick is to remove the head and feet and then cook 'em whole; you can eat the bones 'n' all: just crunch it down! The stewing softens those small bones anyway.

There's also edible pollens in the air, and technology in later eras allowed these to be sucked up efficiently. A high pollen count is 10g per m³ which is really quite a lot of food if you think about it. This PDF says they "found the most pollen at 600 meters" – up in the realm of the Cloud Nomads.

This culture is the least 'permanent' of all cultures in the solarpunk world. Typically, people follow this lifestyle for a few years in their 20s and then go home. It is an exciting life because we travel to festivals bringing equipment in and out, travel to disaster zones delivering emergency aid. We are young, able-bodied people, good with knots and rigging, good with our hands.

The gliders in the cargo deck become lifeboats in the worst-case scenario, but normally they're used on hunting trips. I love to take my glider out from the bottom deck and hunt big game high in the sky. The Southern screamer is an "excellent flier and soarer" and has as much meat as 1½ chickens. (It is eaten somewhat in your dumb universe too.) The most coveted game is the whooper swan, the Canada Goose. Mallards are also pretty good. Radar helps us find game. Eating swans and pigeons might seem weird to you, but it wasn't to the Ancient Greeks and Romans, for example.

The pattern of nested mutual aid groups is universal. Among Bedawin down below on the ground, several 'bayt' form a 'goum'; among the Yolŋu, several 'Ḻikan' confederate into a 'Bäpurru'. Here in the sky, you and your shipmates help each other with cooking and loading/unloading cargo, while your fleetmates support you in other ways. A typical fleet has 28 or 29 airships, each averaging 22 souls. You probably don't have a doctor on your airship with you, but your fleet has a doctor. One ship has the shared Fabrication Workshop (pictured above). One ship has the nightclub.

We can cover 2000km in a day when we need to, or more if the wind favours us. A fleet can haul 1000-1100 metric tonnes (28-29 ships with 30-40 tonnes of cargo). When we show up, we can set up a festival in 72 hours, evacuate 4000 people from a disaster area. That is our power, that is our contribution to the wider world. In return, they provide us the things we can't get in the skies. This agreement is formalised at the highest levels of the democratic federal assemblies.

Our storytelling nights are rich with wild stories of UFOs, as well as tales of the roc and Pouākai. One guy in my fleet claims he has seen the 'jellyfish UAP' you might have heard about.

I've posted about this world before here and here.

It's an alternate history. Colonialism never happened in the first place. The world remained tribal, and traditional cultures remain strong. But 21st century tech develops. There is a lack of capitalism and exploitation.

I downloaded these pics from the multiversal interwebs:

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Traditionally nomadic cultures – such as this Australian bushman – remain nomadic in the 21st century. But their lives are made easier by technology. Under capitalism, developing technology keeps some people poor but increases the wealth of a few. In the solarpunk, non-colonial world, people use tools like this off-road tricycle to make their traditional lifestyles easier.

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North American cultures follow the still-great buffalo herds. They use offroad vehicles that run on gasified biomass they harvest as they go. These vehicles are no faster than a horse. That guy on the right? I guess he's a tourist from a traditional European country; he's visiting his friends. They'll speak the Esperanto-type language to each other.

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This picture was taken in a subway station in Cahokia.

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This is a typical sight in the northeast megaregion. This is what the longhouses of the Haudenosaunee people look like in the 21st century.

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The fishing cultures of North Europe live within the ecological limits. Some fish are still wild-caught, providing 5-10% of the diet. Others are farmed in open ocean farms. Members of a large (town-sized or city-sized) tribal confederacy have the customary right to harvest from these waters, and manage the wild stock and the farms as a commons.

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My post linked above discusses guilds. One guild that exists, alongside doctors, tailors, and microchip-fabricators, is the Soapwitch guild. They have knowledge of local wildflowers, oils, and that sort of thing. Their job is to provide soap, perfume, toothpaste etc. for free to members of their tribe (instead of Unilever and Colgate doing it for profit). It's their tribe's reciprocal obligation to give them food, shelter, protection, etc.

Not to be confused with Legacy Americans. For other uses, see American (disambiguation).

Americans (singular: American, IPA: /əˈmɛɹ.ɪ.kən/) are a heterogeneous ethnic group most heavily concentrated in Europe. They descend from the historical Usonian diaspora. Americans first started to be commonly distinguished from Usonians during the Deluge of Elephants in the time of the Second US Civil War; this distinction, often called the Usonian-American split, was solidified by the formation of the American representative organization Amicon and the publication of its manifesto Amdec in the year 2049.

Americans commonly speak English, Spanish, and French, or derived languages, often freely blending these with each other and with the local languages of areas where they live; many Americans are denaskuloj as well. Deaf Americans most often have European American Sign Language (EASL, IPA: /ˈi.zəl/) as their first language, a divergent and variable form of American Sign Language with partial intelligibility with Locotian American Sign Language (LASL, IPA: /ˈleɪ.zəl/). EASL is designated as one of the three federal working languages of the European Federation alongside Esperanto and Interslavic.

Prior to the Usonian-American split, "American" was a historical name of Usonians. The word comes from "America", the colonial name of Abya Yala, which had come to be used totum pro parte to refer to the United States of America. Modern Americans chose to use the name "American" for themselves in part as an attempt to skunk the term in reference to Abya Yala and the USA. Following the decolonization of Abya Yala, however, a name debate has ignited among Americans on the appropriateness of continuing to use a colonial name referencing Amerigo Vespucci. No replacement name has caught on, however.

The American flag is based on the Usonian flag. It depicts nine horizontal stripes of red and white, with a sky blue canton bearing a large red star. The nine stripes reference the nine regional amicons of Europe whose representatives drafted and signed Amdec; while the red star represents the "new lodestar" of socialism. In its original context, as the Usonian flag's white stars represented a "new constellation" of the constituent states of the United States of America, the American flag's replacement of these white stars with a single red star was intended to symbolize Amdec's assertion that Americans "[did] not belong to any state of the USA", and that the USA was an illegitimate and illegal occupation regime. A common practice among Americans known as "scrifting" the flag symbolizes that American identity is based in interpersonal connections rather than claims to land.

In the modern day, the red star is often said to symbolize the role that Americans played in the Locotian Revolution and in the Socialist Revolution in Europe.

Americans are generally divided into the "Old Dogs" and the "New Litter" according to their relationship to the Deluge of Elephants. Other terms or phrases often used by Americans include "retour", "oh-ro", "ami", "see single" and "em and en?".

I've had this idea for a while now of a Universe where Earth is destroyed but the Cold War Continues on Humanity's new home, based on the Verse from Firefly. An early point of divergence is the Survival of Salvador Allende and the success of CyberSyn.
No one is exactly sure the cause of the End of the Earth, only that for the two decades proceeding Humanity's exodus the planet was wracked by increasingly devastating volcanic and seismic activity. In the 80's scientist across the globe began looking for a place to flee, to save even a fraction of humanity from the intensifying devastation. The System was discovered during this period, a massive compound Solar System consisting of 5 giant suns orbited by a dozen proto-stars each in turn orbited by nearly a hundred planets and twice as many moons. News of this discovery led to the race to send Humans to The System. Three projects began development under NATO, The Warsaw Pact, and The Non-Aligned Movement. These massive vessels were built over nearly a decade a assembled in Orbit. An agreement was made to limit the number of original colonists of each ship to 10,000, with more ships to come in the future. No more would ever come. The technology of the time meant the journey to The System would take about 57 years to complete. Generations would be born and die aboard the ships, never to see The System. The worlds that each ship finally touched down on were inhospitable worlds with only the ingredients for one day supporting life. The original shelter of mankind in The System was made of deorbited pieces of their original ships, the hab blocks, reactors, hydroponics and more forming the original Arcologies on the worlds. Here the long work of Terra forming began. For the next 300 years Humanity explored and expanded across The System. the new home worlds of Unity (NATO now known as the Union of Planets), Rebirth (NAM now known as the Rebirth Accord) and Cradle (Warsaw Pact now known as the New Peoples Republic) were turned into Shirtsleeve worlds requiring no survival gear. Each faction began colonizing other planets and moons in The System, while each of the large asteroid belts surrounding the home worlds became home to large "belter' communities. Each faction maintained contact with Earth despite the decades their messenger probes took to reach Earth. Conditions on Earth continued degrading with more and more sporadic communication until 280 years after arrival the last probes to ever arrive from Earth spoke of Apocalypse and Upheaval. This began the "No-Contact" Era becoming year zero of the standard calendar. Around 70 NC each faction had made contact with the other two. While originally met with celebrations on many of the worlds of The System, this would be the beginning of the competition and strife in The System.

Thank you for reading my Infodump , if you have any questions or comments they are welcome.

In many ways the world of Muzhchina LA Mushina is about domination and subservience, both on a national level and on a gender level. But what I haven't talked about a lot here is the interpersonal level and the lives of those who inhabit this world.

Helene Batova is a slightly above average Burgunian who suffers under their political system. She's obviously very proud, but also cold to those around her. She thinks of herself as very mature yet often acts rashly, like when Pierre was grating on her with his enthusiasm for aviation. Deep down she did not really believe Andre's accusations against him, yet she cut off all contacts with him anyways. As she matures she constantly believes herself to have finally become a responsible adult, yet constantly learns that she's still far from grown.

In what has to be one of the least kinky aspects of MLM she eventually keeps Andre, now her lover, on a leash, as if to secure her control over him. She is only fooling herself and doing a poor job of it; Andre's power over her and the abuse he inflicts gradually breaks her in the years following her disconnection with Pierre. She could move to the Orenland occupation areas to find a life where she would be respected for her sex, yet her blind nationalism without being able to see through class relations chains her to Burgune. Even so she eventually manages to build her prototype of an aircraft, but ends up crushing both of her legs on her test flight due to sabotage that was aimed at Pierre, no less. Even when he takes care of her during her recovery, she can't find it within herself to love him because of what she's driven between them herself.

In contrast Zhigao is a much happier woman, from Xibei, which is basically China. While her entire family is dead, and she's heavily injured when she barely escapes to Burgune with the skin on her back, she's happy. According to her philosophy, as long as she's done the best she could, then there's no reason for her to lament her fate. And she still has plenty of loved ones to cling to: Fang Zheng (her boyfriend, still in Xibei and alive due to smoothened relations between the NPA and monarchy), and Pierre as well as his friends. Of course, she's a very sloppy person in her daily life, though determined (seen through the handkerchief she sewed with Zheng's name that Pierre finds while she's semi-conscious off the train), and she semi-secretly desires to be taken care of. And the young men and women she organizes with are truly her friends who would (and did, when she first was ordered to escape to Burgune due to her age) die for her, while many of Helene's 'friends' are quick to abandon her, if not outright manipulative.

At least during the first half of MLM, the culture within the NPA is much more open, with outright revolutionary factors flourishing, while Burgune is a typical conservative monarchy with a heavily oppressive society, weak to outsiders but harsh to its own citizens. Just through these two women alone, it's easy to see how big of an influence where you've grown affects the characters.

The living memory of Saerdastia is one of war and revolution, cataclysm and plague and famine, great upheavals, genocide, unrest, and incredible wonders unlike any seen by prior generations. The youth of today, those born after the establishment of the Age of Peace, do not recall the cruelty and folly of the nobles, their short-sighted and petty ambitions, the horrors of the great wars that followed, the hunger, the chaos, the rage, the despair. They are told to remember those who paid the price of mortal ambition, and who paved the way for the time of plenty and stability they know now, but it's different, remembering, rather than simply seeing it in a mirror.

The simple times before, messy though they were, were slow-paced and predictable. The rich hoarded their riches, wars were waged, crops were grown, trade and commerce flowed, all the various mortal races found ways to coexist even as they clashed. All know the legends of the ancient times, the elves who enslaved everyone with their ordered magics and machines that performed wonders on command. They're told of the rebellion, when the primitives rose up as one and chased the elves into their cities, who hid behind their glowing shields and never came out again. The elves are gone, and so are their glowing shields, but their cities remain, and the wreckage of their machines besides. It was a humble alchemist's assistant who first saw the potential in something as simple as a child's toy, a floating pentad of crystal spheres arranged within the empty space of a simple wire cradle. A curiosity his master had acquired in a card game. The balls would clack together, the force of the first transferring to the last, setting up a physical chain reaction that reversed this and then repeated it, all without the spheres losing their levitational force.

His master disregarded this, the story goes; he was in pursuit of the philosopher's stone, after all. A much more noble pursuit. The apprentice grew frustrated, and fled in the night, stealing the cradle toy and a number of other elven artifacts and lab equipment besides. He studied the crystals, made of aerynite, a curious alchemical substance known for its odd magical storage properties, but it was, like the toy, largely seen as a curiosity, too fickle for much practical use.

The elves clearly knew better. He studied its properties, figured out how to align their structures in the way the elves had, and eventually, he found a way to control the storage, release, and transformation of the essences within. Inside of a year he had a functional levitation engine, and knew how to build more. Knowledge of his devices spread, and he grew rich, and richer still selling his findings to others, allowing this technology to proliferate. Other techniques arose from experimenting with the crystal's properties, and those of the elven machines.

Alchemists and magi were able to reverse engineer many of the elves' incredible wonders: crystalline aerynite-infused "sprites" that levitated matter and manipulated essence to perform a variety of tasks, programmed by elven command glyphs; humanoid golems and flying mechanical scarab spies they could slot into to manipulate from afar; magic mirrors capable of showing flat images and eventually three-dimensional illusions near-indistinguishable from the real thing, and crystal needles that stored these images and sounds; greater and more powerful levitation engines capable of carrying massive airships; scrying devices that could see through solid matter; speaking stones that carried voices instantaneously over great distances; energetic shrouds like bubbles that could be adjusted to hinder or halt light, sound, or matter; weapons like lightning casters and fire sprayers, ice bombs, gravitational reversers, flensing rays that strip away matter layer by layer, cutting beams, and other horrible things barely understood but all-too-eagerly wielded by would-be conquerers and religious crusaders.

The result was predictable: widespread war and upheaval. Kingdoms smashed into each other, consolidated, slaughtered one another, and eventually the noble class started to shrink. Knights were torn to shreds by new weaponry, and martial prowess gave way to conscripted peasants with lightning scepters and flensing cannons in hand, often as dangerous to themselves as the enemy.

Society rapidly evolved in its wake. Mages grew wise to the rules of science and experimentation, constantly seeking an edge over enemy kingdoms. New theories of economic function and development, ways to exploit natural resources, manufacturing, labor exploitation, and exciting new social theories to justify slavery and ethnic cleansing. The most notorious innovator was a necromancer lord so vile his name was struck from history books, and all needle recordings of his experiments on living prisoners, corpses, and undead (mindless and otherwise) are classified and kept out of circulation. Still, he revolutionized medicine, introduced cell theory and germ theory, and discovered methods of limb replacement and rapid healing that are still used to this day. He also developed the method of breaking the Holy Church's anti-undeath protection that they bestowed upon their loyal soldiers, which was instrumental in shattering the loyalty of their ranks and ending their multi-front genocidal holy war. Too late to save the hobgoblins, or most of the orcs and goblins, but it was enough for the dwarven corporate lord to sweep in and wipe them out to seize their mines and treasuries.

The abuses heaped upon the lower classes reached a breaking point. Bit by bit, a revolutionary coalition formed among defectors from various armies. Conditions deteriorated for decades before finally, those who would eventually become known as the Keepers of the Peace gained a pivotal edge when they seized control of the Thunderhead fleet of ships; nightmarish iron-clad flying vessels covered in rods and prongs that manipulate lightning, mobile hurricanes capable of leveling cities with enough concentrated power. This gave them the edge needed for lesser cells to successfully revolt and begin the Great Purge, hunting down any of noble blood and those who served them willingly, eventually fully wiping out all the nobles. Victory was bittersweet; the continent lie in ruins. Farmland was destroyed and unusable far and wide. The druids had gathered their strength and summoned a massive intelligent bed of brambles, which strangled the city of a king who had cut down a sacred forest, tearing out and devouring the minds of those who choked to death on its thorns. The brambles grew massive and they remained hostile to any who would approach, blaming all for the horrors inflicted on nature. A massive maelstrom of never-ending lightning tore apart anything that tried to approach the northern sea. The Necromancer left behind the Deadlands, a peninsula that is all that remains of his self-destructed kingdom. Anything dead there rises up and tries to kill the closest living thing it can sense. The walls keep people out and the land and skies are regularly cleansed, but most people don't want to think about how the borders are still growing by a half-inch or so every year. Nomadic peoples fled to the cities; races that once had bitter blood feuds were forced into close quarters, the peace kept by the revolutionaries who'd killed the nobles and now struggled to keep order in the wake of the wars.

The wars wiped out half the population. Famine and plague and banditry wiped out half of those who remained. In the end, it was the magi who saved everyone, and thus bought their absolution for their part in destroying the known world. Time manipulation was another weapon that had been used in the war, but they created a system of machinery that was able to simulate a closed loop of cultivation at rapid speeds. In this way they were able to rapidly grow at first only mushrooms, but soon enough actual staple crops and eventually even fruit and spices and simple, small animals for meat. The famine was done with practically overnight, and rebuilding began. The Maelstrom and Deadlands are being contained, the repopulation and rebuilding efforts have been ongoing for several decades now. Various societies are adjusting to the aftermath.

The Demodocians (bat people) who fled underground are emerging again, the Dzeturi (bug people) have ceased their extreme isolationism and settled their own internal turmoil enough to function, trade, and slowly restart immigration. The orcs and goblins have joined together as a single nation with widespread and disparate holdings, and pride themselves on having many children. But many orcs and goblins live among the humans and dwarves and halflings and kobolds, who tend to keep to the walled city-states, working in factories or time farms. The druids expand the brambles and accept refugees, and maintain an easy truce with the Keepers by securing lands to restore to their natural state, a process that will take centuries. The Keepers recruit from all walks of life but tend to draw heavily from orcish, human, and dwarven stock. Orcs, humans, goblins, and halflings regularly mix families together, something almost unheard of in prior generations. But nowadays, everyone knows all too well that everyone is simply a Mortal; everyone dies. They've seen it. And they try to impress this upon their children and grandchildren, but among Mortals, old habits die hard. Wealth begins to accumulate, cruelties are tolerated, racial divisions fettered with sputtering feuds over wealth ignite despite laws mandating an end to racial war. The world is messy, as it always was, but at least there's no nobles now. It's a brave new world, there's capital to be made and opportunities to seize. There's no way people will repeat old mistakes.